That good kind o' tired
Have you ever heard somebody mention "that good kind o' tired"? That's the stuff life's made of, right there. You know, the kind of fatigue you get from working all day in the heat, doing manual labor. You don't get that good kind o' tired from sitting at a computer, staring at a monitor or from answering phones. No.... The tired most of us have is the bad kind o' tired. It's brain fatigue, and it makes us frothy short-tempered and frustrated. But, when you come in from a day in the fields, Brother, you may be tired as hell, but the idea of hugging your kid or talking to your wife seems special.

THE 100 COOLEST ACTORS OF ALL TIME
"No, I'm not talking the greatest actors, I'm talking coolest. That certain quality of toughness, edginess, or even craziness that leaps from the screen and impresses the hell out of you."

PART OF THE PROBLEM
OverLawyered.com shows how you can get through life without resorting to legal help.

FROM THE RIGHT
Rush Limbaugh says that Bill Clinton is to blame for the rash of pre-teen oral sex that's pervading the world.

"Oprah had a bunch of 12-to-16-year-old kids on her show, and they talked about how casually they engage in oral sex - and about how they learned from Bill Clinton that it's not "really" sex. Some of the boys said they don't even have to ask for oral sex in middle school; girls just offer it. They talked about "trains," which has nothing to do with the Little Engine That Could."

Go ahead ... you supply a caption
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Great balls of fire. Some Strange chemical reaction is causing centuries-old cannon balls retrieved from sunken ships to burst into flames or explode while sitting on archaeologists' desks. This is a freaky as freaky gets.

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the world's 100 tallest skyscrapers

HOW MUCH IS YOUR CIGARETTE, ALCOHOL OR OTHER SUBSTANCE ABUSE HABIT COSTING YOU?
Find out with the Drug Calculator
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OH, Man! It amazes me to see the things people will manufacture and buy. But, then again ... there is one wacky product on the market that may be well worth the investement for some. It's called Jonny Glow ... made for those that have problems finding the toilet in the dark
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FEED THE CHILDREN?
No, forget that! Ted Nugent wants to arm the children

the ten worst cars of the millennium We all know someone who has owned one of them

Federation of American Scientists concerns about weapons and terrorism.

Hell to Pay: the Catholic Church resists reform. Two articles via The Village Voice.

The world's oldest Companies
“Companies come and companies go,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill remarked when the Enron scandal broke last winter. For Secretary O’Neill and everyone else who subcribes to that presumption, the following list should come as a revelation. These companies—the world's 100 oldest continuously family-owned firms—have outlasted governments, nations, cities and certainly once-mighty corporations like Enron. Indeed, a common thread among most of them seems to be their manageable size. “Some of the oldest businesses,” the English business historians Henry G. Button and Andrew P. Lampert have noted, “are relatively small undertakings.”

X-Ray Vision Needed to Find Black Superheroes

THINK of comic book heroes, and perhaps you conjure thoughts of Superman flying over Metropolis or Batman and Robin speeding out of their cave. And of course, Hollywood investors and comic book enthusiasts likely have Spider-Man on their minds this weekend, as the web-slinger hits the big screen.

But as the media world focuses on Peter Parker, the fictional photojournalist-cum-superhero created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, lesser-known artists and writers have unveiled a new hero unlike any of the others who have recently made it big.

This hero has superpowers. He has a normal life apart from his supernatural one. And, yes, he is busy saving the world.

What he does not have, however, is white skin.

The WitchDoctor (a k a Dr. Jovan Carrington), uses voodoo lore and supernatural vision to uncover his African ancestry, confront racial stereotypes and, in his free time, come down hard on the bad guys

credit to David Horsey

Persuasion

"Scientists are uncovering ways of making messages more persuasive. Politicians and salesmen use such tricks already..."


"Eric Knowles, a professor of social psychology at the University of Arkansas, was very convincing. He said that he had experimental evidence to support a new approach to persuasion—one that works on removing people's inhibitions, or lowering their resistance."

Salespeople, take note.

Innovators

Freeplay, is the South African company that makes renewable energy products like the innovative wind-up Freeplay radio. And just like all great innovators, the people at Freeplay are keeping up with the times.

Their new "FreeCharge" cellphone charger -- developed with Motorola -- works on your muscle power, or with a plug adaptor. No more dead mobile batteries, even when your conventional charger isn't handy! Approximately 45 seconds of winding will allow 4 - 6 minutes of talk time and several hours of standby time. The more you wind, the more power you put into the unit.

How We Hear
"..."Sound itself is mechanical, a wave that moves, just like the ripples fanning out from a pebble dropped in a lake," says Paul Fuchs, Ph.D., professor of otolaryngology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. "When the inner ear detects this wave, a burst of chemicals is released and a nerve sends an electrical signal to the brain that carries information about the original sound. But the nature of the chemical burst has been a mystery until now." ..."

This monstrous object is actually an innocuous pillar of gas and dust. Called the Cone Nebula (NGC 2264), this giant pillar resides in a turbulent star-forming region. This picture was taken April 2, by the newly installed Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Via (AP/NASA)

Rays of Inspiration

Born to Win
We are all potential winners, Sometimes we loose sight of that because our lives may get slightly out of alignment. Perhaps it's because you've hit a bump or two that has knocked you off course and you become temporarily befuddled. A failed relationship, a lost job, financial problems, unformed goals, a lack of support, illness, many things can send us off course temporarily.

It is difficult for others to understand the rawness of a broken heart or the aching emptiness of an unguided spirit. You and I know. We have been there. Some even become afraid to risk any more because of what they have risked and lost already.

During prosperous times, we build and focus on material things, forgetting to strengthen what is in our hearts. When we focus on our potential we often gain insight into ourselves, insight that leads to self-mastery and an expansion of our understanding of what we can become and develop in our personal and professional lives.

Several years ago, I read Stephen Covey's The seven habits of highly effective people . The one habit that impressed me the most was "seek first to understand". Most people typically seek first to be understood rather than to uderstand. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. We are either speaking or preparing to speak. We filter what we hear or see through the lenses of our own perspective, As a result, when we have a problem with someone, the first thing we say is "that person just doesn't understand".